YEAR: 1995

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: August

STATE: California

COUNTY: Del Norte County

OBSERVED: Near Cresent City: a television production crew from Los Angeles videotapes what appears to be a bigfoot crossing a forest road in front of their RV. Among the crew was a Playboy model who subsequently appeared on the Jay Leno show and Hardcopy to discuss the incident.Sent to the Internet Virtual Bigfoot Conference (IVBC) mailing list: The "Redwoods Footage"

Follow-up investigation report:

Sent to the Internet Virtual Bigfoot Conference (IVBC) mailing list:

The "Redwoods Footage"

The crew of Adventures television were shooting an episode featuring a drive up the California coast highway in August 1995. The fifth and final day of shooting was in [a redwood forest near Cresent City, in Del Norte County, CA]. After finishing, the camera crew were breaking down the equipment and the other 5 were relaxing by driving around through the redwoods and partying. The music was up, they were goofing off for the hi-8 camera that they used for behind-the-scenes shots and just to generally document the trip when the betacam wasn't on. They had turned onto a narrow side road and realized there was nowhere to turn around. It was getting dark and had started to rain and they were finding it rather difficult to back the 34 ft. RV out.

At some point the driver spotted what he thought was a bear on the road about thirty-five yards ahead. Their first thought was wouldn't it to [be] great to have some wildlife footage to include it the episode. But as the object walked at an angle across the road and away from them bipedally, arms swinging, they began to question whether it was a bear. They drove forward to within about 5 yards of it, when it retreated back across the road in the direction it had come, directly in front of the RV, the headlights illuminating it up to about the waist. It appears a little startled or intimidated by the RV and lights, but continues across the road to disappear behind a large redwood. Two of the witnesses immediately ran outside to try to get more footage but it was too dark and the forest was extremely dense.

What one sees on the video is a large (about 7.5 ft. tall) somewhat shaggy male "Sasquatch", that bears a striking resemblence to the subject of the Patterson-Gimlin film. In fact, I have juxtaposed frames from both in which the subjects are in similar poses and the similarity in posture, shape of head, configuration of neck and shoulders, proportions of torso and limbs, et., is very clear.

There are a number of anatomical features suggested on the video that are very intriguing -- head shape and position, genitalia (?), muscle definition and action, foot and ankle anatomy, and more. These observations alone are enough to cause me to give the video serious consideration. I have arranged for two independent enhancements of the video, giving particular scrutiny to the points I mentioned. There is a frame that should give some detail of facial features as well. We will have the results in the near future. I have also been at the site, personally interviewed one of the witnesses, and read the testimonies of the others. So far nothing to suggest any lack of credibility in their account.

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Notes from David Bittner, Pixel Workshop Inc.

I personally performed one of the image enhancement sessions to the above mentioned video footage. I was provided with a Beta SP, first generation dub from the Hi8 original. The footage was consistant with what one would expect to see from a Hi8 camcorder shooting under low-light conditions, with a large amount of chroma noise.

We digitized the footage and tried several different kinds of image enhancement, including level and gamma adjustments, magnification, slow motion, noise reduction, as well as an edge enhancing unsharp mask filter. Several combinations of the above techniques were used, each yielding various degrees of enhancement.

The low contrast and high noise of the footage made the enhancement process difficult at best. Still, we were able to see many details with more clarity than was possible in the original footage. Our analysis of the footage reveals nothing that would indicate a hoax. There is no visible evidence of a costume, and there is nothing that indicates any doctoring of the video or other use of special visual effects.

A major television network is currently in production of a bigfoot documentary that will include the Redwoods Footage, and they are performing an independant enhancement of the footage.

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